Moth to the Flame
by hexterah
Summary: The story of how the Soloman children try to scrape by in Rapture. (The original three Solo brats and their friends in Rapture!) Started: 02/03/2010


**Notes:** I was in a major Star Wars: EU place and a major BioShock place in my life (haha when am i not) and this came from me fiddling with the character's names first. AND IT ALL SPIRALED DOWNHILL FROM THERE. I never finished this story - but I'll be putting all the chapters I have up here. I was maybe a third of the way through writing it but I had a solid outline so I'm probably going to finally finish it up. Hopefully! :D _Started: 02/03/2010_

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 **Chapter 1**

The fruit juice was stale.

Jase wasn't sure how fruit juice could really be _stale_ , but it left a flavor in his mouth that made him want to retch every time his tastebuds got a touch of it. Tossing the container to the side, he listened to it land on the dock with a hollow plop before he went back to digging in his lunch bag. He had forgotten what he packed for himself that morning - besides stale fruit juice, of course - but a little searching in his brown paper bag brought out a mushy apple and a cheese and onion sandwich.

Wow, cheese and onions. He was really living it up now.

Taking an angry and very large bite of the sandwich, he reminded himself to tell Jane _again_ that it was her turn to go to the Farmer's Market and pick up the groceries that week. He had done it himself last week and Andy had done it the week before.

Not that Jane ever listened to him. Or listened to Andy. Or anyone for that matter.

Jase's mother was a politician and his father had grown up as a smuggler. When he was little, Jase wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps - but he found, especially in Rapture, that his father's were so much easier to fall into. His siblings were in Rapture too - the three of them had been living together since they arrived. Their parents had high hopes for them by sending them down to live under the sea. They were _special_. They excelled at their schoolwork and studies at very young ages and Andrew Ryan, the founder and mind behind Rapture, had called for future scholars and businessmen and scientists and artists. Their parents thought it would be better in Rapture for them than it would be on the surface. They thought their children would have more of a chance at a better life.

Except now Jase was working at Happy Noodle, delivering food every day. His twin sister, Jane, was dancing at Eve's Garden, usually for a persistent gaggle of boys and Andy was gutting fish down at Fontaine Fisheries every morning and afternoon. Besides delivering food, Jase was one of the few people in Rapture helping Frank Fontaine smuggle items from the surface into the city - little to his siblings knowledge. Things Andrew Ryan didn't want in his utopia - bibles and crosses were a big import. Jase really wasn't a religious man at all, but he liked the money.

He recalled the first few months the Soloman children had lived in Rapture. He and his sister were only nine and their little brother a mere seven. They had started school, making friends and absorbing every piece of knowledge they could get their hands and eyes on. They had lived at the school with some of the other children who had been sent to Rapture and their lives seemed like they were going great. The school had a series of accidents after that, once plasmids were introduced to the city - students fighting, instructors quitting. They had been training and planning and living like they were supposed to; they were supposed to grow up and become part of the people who spearheaded the city's growth and well-being.

They were going to be part of Rapture's elite.

And now here they were, ten years later, one barely making a living on two jobs, another getting objectified just about every night and the last arriving home after work every day reeking of fish innards.

The worst part was that they couldn't leave. Once they were in Rapture, they were in Rapture for good. And their parents knew this when sending them. That was the fact that always managed to slap Jase square in the jaw when he thought of it. Did their parents have that much faith in them when they sent them down here? Did they really trust in the city so much to take care of their three children? Did they _even care_?

"Jase!"

Twisting his head while still gnawing on a mouthful of bread, cheese and onions, Jase spotted a black-haired man trotting down the docks towards him. His mess of ebony hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and his eyes were wide and alert.

"Hey Zeke." He turned back to his sandwich and took another bite, letting his eyes drift back to his friend once he sat down on the docks in front of him. He had met Ezekiel in school when they had arrived in Rapture. Much like the Soloman kids, he was forced out of his home and studies once the learning establishment failed. But unlike the Soloman's, he had taken to the streets of Rapture instead of trying to settle down somewhere. He slept in vents, got food whatever way he could manage day by day and picked up a quick buck here or there whenever he could find the offers for work.

"How's things?"

"How do they look?" Jase dropped his sandwich on the brown paper bag and batted it off of his lap, stretching out and planting his hands behind him.

"Same as always." A few beats passed. "Guess who I saw at the Kashmir Restaurant the other night?" He said suddenly and cocked a slender eyebrow as he reached over and took the apple from where Jase had discarded it behind him.

"What were _you_ doing at the Kashmir Restaurant?"

"I was sneaking into the kitchens and stealing food. What else?" Ezekiel scoffed and took an enthusiastic bite from the fruit.

Jase scowled. "How about you get a job?"

"How 'bout _you_ shut up?" He responded, flecks of apple flying from his lips.

Jase absently listened to Zeke munch on the old apple as his eyes scanned the glass above them, his gaze drifting through the water and across the wavering line of the city through the sea. Rapture was definitely a technological marvel, no doubt about that. But at the same time it was basically an underwater hell for people in his situation.

"Anyways," Ezekiel started, tossing the core over Jase's reclining form and into the water under the docks beyond. "Guess who I saw at Kashmir the other night?"

Delivering a lazy shrug, Jase rolled his head and let his eyes move from the sea above to Zeke, whose posture very much mirrored his own at that point.

"Miss Tanith Kendall Cherish Dooley."

The full name rolled off of Zeke's tongue and hit Jase's ears like a melody. That was it. That was Jase's one bright spot in the dank world of Rapture.

 _Tanith._

He had met her when the Soloman children had arrived in the underwater utopia. Along with Zeke, she had gone to school with them, but because of her parents and their status in Rapture, she was more than well off when their academia went under. Her parents were politicians, her mother more than her father. And they were usually found in meetings with Andrew Ryan concerning policies and events around Rapture. They were a couple of his top advisors - and Andrew Ryan had _many_ advisors.

"Oh yeah?" Jase tried to sounded mildly disconnected and disinterested, but he knew the way his muscles tensed when Zeke mentioned her name probably didn't go unnoticed by the other, who had always been a wildly observant companion.

"Yeah, she was with some stuffy knob who was probably just trying to bag her, you know?"

Jase stayed silent.

"I watched 'em for a few minutes while snacking on some of the stuff I swiped. He was pretty offensive looking. Combed-over red hair, beady little eyes. He was like a big buffoon and he talked with his mouth full. She really didn't look amused."

That caused the slightest upturn of Jase's lips.

He finally looked over to Zeke and gulped before asking a simple question. "How's her arm?"

"Healed over. Still gone. She hasn't had surgery." Shifting, he leaned towards Jase and lowered his voice, reaching out and patting his friend on the shoulder. "Jase, it's been five years."

"I know."

In between the plasmid introduction at school and their last days there, an accident had occurred. Jase remembered it like it was yesterday. He and Tanith had been two of the closest students in the school and they were often teased for their relationship and how much time they spent with each other in class and out. He sat behind her in lectures and spent many of those long days staring at the back of her head or leaning up to tell her horrible jokes or passing notes back and forth with her. Sometimes he found himself fingering the copper curls that she pushed behind her shoulders as they brushed his desk, lightly pulling at them and causing her to reach back and smack his knee.

One day, the two of them and a group of their friends were fiddling with some of the plasmids the school had. They had correctly injected the EVE, like they were taught to, and then after that they were ready to use the mind-controlled substances - or so they thought. It was exciting, it was dangerous and when that day ended they all realized how stupid they had been to even bother playing with them in the first place. Jane and Zeke were marveling at the fact that they could shoot fire from their fingertips. Two of their other friends, Raymond and Louie, had been goofing around with bolts of electricity between their fingertips and he and Tanith had been experimenting with the Telekenisis plasmid. Luckily, Andy had been in his room sick that day. Lord knows what would've happened to him if he had been out there messing with the plasmids like they had.

They had been juggling items back and forth in an arc between their outstretched hands. He would toss something to her without even touching it and she would stop it before it got near her and send it back to him, the item coasting through the air like it weighed nothing. They had been getting increasingly more risky with what they were shifting between them, each one picking up something heavier or more awkward and showing off how well they could handle it with their plasmid and a simple swipe of the wrist.

He had flicked a finger in her direction, casually coasting a tall file cabinet across the room to her and Jase had watched her toss him a lazy grin and lift her left arm to stop it, like she had stopped everything else. It stopped, but not completely. And Jase remembered the way her face had changed, from a calm and collected expression of pride to a faltering and frantic sense of dread. Something happened and she couldn't keep the item above her any more. He remembered watching Tanith try to bolt out from under it, but it fell too fast. Jase recalled the way she collapsed on the ground beside it - her left arm was pinned under it. He ran to her and fell to his knees beside her, yelling for one of the others to call for help. Tanith made no noise, she just bit her lip and pressed her eyes shut while Jane had gone to call the medics. Jase had remembered the exact moment Tanith had went unconscious. The way the muscles in her neck relaxed and her eyes had rolled back into her head. He could still see the beads of his sweat that had rolled from his chin and landed on her jaw line and he could see the thick pool of red spreading from under the file cabinet on the other side of her.

It seemed like such a stupid thing. A file cabinet! Of all things, a damn file cabinet. But that was it. The bones in her arm were shattered beyond repair and the pressure the weight of it had caused in her veins and muscles had been a major enough reason, along with the loss of bones, to amputate her arm.

He had visited her every day at the Medical Pavilion while she healed and they talked for hours on end, sometimes even through the night. About what they wanted with their lives, why they were in Rapture, the accident - he told her more jokes, she told him she didn't blame him for what happened. She always said if she had bothered to use enough EVE to power her own plasmids then she would've been able to block the shot with no problem.

Once the students scattered after the school was abandoned, he hadn't talked to her much. Their last day together, she had told him to stay in touch and she had planted an innocent kiss at the corner of his lips. Then she was gone. She had been back in the wealthy part of Rapture with her parents. He had seen her here and there around the city, but it was no more than a few seconds of eye contact or an awkward glance. They hadn't talked in five years. They had been best friends and they hadn't talked in _five years_.

Jase figured she had most likely moved on to the rich boys up in Olympus Heights and had forgotten about him. And he was sure they fawned all over her when she stepped out to the Kashmir Restaurant or to Fort Frolic, tongues hanging out of their heads, tails wagging - they followed her all around, he bet. Jase figured she probably had a good twenty suitors now. More than half were most likely disgusted by her left arm, which he just learned from Zeke was still only a stump, but he was damn sure they weren't disgusted by her _money_.

A scowl marred his features.

"What is it?" Zeke asked.

Glancing back to his friend, Jase tried to force a smile. "Nothing. I was just thinking about Tanith."

"I'll bet. I still can't believe she hasn't had the surgery."

"Of course you can believe it," Jase responded as he pulled his feet under him and sat facing Zeke. "She blamed the accident on herself for not injecting enough EVE. She blames the accident on herself and not bothering with the surgery to fix it is her way of coping with it."

"You mean punishing herself for it."

Jase sighed. "If you want to look at it that way..."

They sat in silence for a few moments until Zeke broke it, his eyes narrowed and his voice lowered to a whisper.

"You still have feelings for her, don't you?"

Jase pulled a stray thread from the cuff of his sleeve and balled it up between his pointer finger and thumb, tossing it across the dock. He didn't answer Ezekiel's question.

"That's what I thought."

Zeke had noticed that the subject seemed to be grating on his friend's nerves - or maybe it was certain aspects of the subject - so he quickly changed it at that point, not wanting to upset Jase more than the man already seemed.

"How're Andy and Jane?"

"They're okay." His eyes widened for a moment before he shot to his feet. "Speaking of them, I need to go get Andy. He should be off work by now."

Zeke stood, picking up Jase's trash as he did. He balled up the paper bag and handed it to him. "Isn't Andy old enough to walk himself home?"

"Yeah, but we always walk home together. It's been like that for years."

With a nod and a pat to his friend's shoulder, Zeke nodded. "I get it. He's lucky to have a brother like you."

Jase didn't have to force a smile at that point, because Zeke's words caused one to come naturally. "Thanks." He gave Ezekiel a clap on the back and then turned, tossing the paper bag into a trash can along the dock. "I'll see you later."

He heard Zeke call out a goodbye as he meandered along the docks of Neptune's Bounty towards Fontaine Fisheries.

Andy was waiting for him by the entrance when he got there, his glasses on top of his head and his left hand patiently picking at a scab on the back of his right hand where he had accidentally cut himself a few days earlier with one of the gutting knives.

"Stop picking at it," Jase grabbed his little brother's hand and pulled it, yanking him away from the wooden column he had been resting against. He dropped Andy's hand and shifted his arm around his shoulder instead, absently feeling his brother's fingers clasp around the strap of his messenger bag. The kid reeked of raw seafood, but Jase had grown used to it, and Andy had grown used to the looks he got while walking home with his brother - the stench of fish following them all the way back to their apartment.

"I can't help it. I have to look at it all day while I work and it's like it just wants me to pick at it, y'know?"

"It'll just get worse if you do that."

With a loud sigh, Andy quickened his pace to keep up with his brother, worried that if he didn't stay in step with him, Jase would lose him in the crowd up by the bathyspheres. Reaching the end of Neptune's Bounty, Jase took his arm from his brother's shoulders and told him to stay close as they began dodging people and sidestepping crowds of citizens on their way home from work as well. Andy was behind Jase, both hands now tightened around the strap of his older brother's bag.

Once they had taken the bathysphere to Apollo Square, the crowds had thinned a little and and it was easier for the Solomans to walk beside each other.

Jase had his eyes locked on their path ahead of them, blinking at the sight of the dimly lit sign for the Artemis Suites. Their apartments. Every day he worried that they wouldn't be able to scrape enough together for rent that month and would end up somewhere like Fontaine's Home for the Poor. It was bad enough that their apartment barely had any furniture in it and the shower only worked three-quarters of the time it should've - and when it did it only spit out cool to cold water. They didn't have enough to pay to get it fixed.

At least the apartment had a nice view.

"Can we go see sis?"

Ripping his eyes from the sign, he turned his head to the right and looked to his little brother. "She's already left for work."

"I know, can we go see her at work tonight?" Andy's eyes lit up. Andy always worked days at the fisheries and Jane always worked nights at Eve's Garden - Jase never knew if he was working nights or days until he woke up in the morning and called in to find out. For the three of them to get together - no matter where it happened to be - it was always something to look forward to. It was something cozy, something that reminded them that they were a family and things could _always be worse_.

"We should probably get cleaned up first." Jase scrunched his face up. "I don't think you're going to impress any ladies at the Garden smelling like _that_."

His brother laughed. It was his chirping chuckle that always made Jase grin when he heard it.

Once they entered the apartment, Jase motioned to the bathroom at the end of the apartment. "I'm gonna take a quick nap. You go ahead and take a shower first and then wake me up when you're done."

"'Kay." Andy shifted to the living area in the middle of their apartment and set his bag down on the lumpy couch he slept on in front of the old snowy television every night. It was the most comfortable piece of furniture to the Soloman's name and Jane and Jase had gladly let their little brother use it for a bed.

Jase watched him for a few moments, grabbing a glass from the counter and filling it up with tap water. He took a swig as Andy found clean clothes in the basket he stashed his garments in beside the tv and then threw his little brother a lopsided grin as he vanished into the bathroom at the end of the hall. Once he finished the water, Jase set the glass beside the sink and sighed quietly, eyeing the living room - Andy's makeshift bedroom - before he entered the hall towards the bathroom and veered off into the first room on the left, dropping his bag on the floor. His own bedroom.

There was no door on his room, but Jane had built him a small contraption over his door frame that held a thick and ratty floor-to-ceiling curtain. It was a calming, dark pink piece of fabric and Jane had asked her boss for it from work - it was off of one of the dressing rooms at Eve's Garden. Jase remembered Jane telling him that she just whined to her boss about how they were ugly curtains and the dressing rooms deserved better. New curtains were installed on the dressing rooms the next week. He pulled the curtain shut a little ways and heard the shower switch on in the bathroom down the hall past Jane's room. Even though the water wasn't anywhere near a comfortable temperature, Jase knew Andy always took long showers. It took a while to get the scent of his job off of him.

Stretching, Jase looked out to the city through his favorite part of his room. His window. It was a fairly large window for an apartment their size, but he didn't complain. He would often sit on his cot with his elbows on the sill and stare out it, watching schools of fish swim by or occasionally, if he got lucky, a whale or an octopus drifting overhead. Besides the window, the cot and the curtain, he had an old desk which he piled his clothes on. And a photograph stuck to the wall above it all. It was of Jane, Andy, Louie and Zeke in the foreground, at school when they were all younger, making silly faces and acting their ages - but to the right of that little group was Jase himself, talking to a smiling girl with a head of copper hair. That was the part of this picture his eyes were always drawn to. They were fairly blurry there in the background of the shot, but it was all he had concerning Tanith. And it was better than nothing. Zeke's comments earlier had made him even bother to look at that picture on the wall again - before it had just sort of blended in with the rest of his _nothing_ that made up his bedroom.

Stripping his shirt and his pants off, both of which smelled like a sick mix of overcooked noodles and raw fish, Jase gently set himself down on the tall cot that passed as his bed. His skin instantly erupted in goosebumps against the cool air and he clenched his jaw against the threat of his teeth chattering. The shorts he was wearing stank of the food too, most likely, but he wasn't going to dirty another pair for a simple nap. Especially when he was going to take a shower afterwards. He turned his head to look out the window briefly before collapsing onto his back and curling up under the covers. Thoughts of work were going through his head, thoughts of visiting his sister, thoughts of grocery shopping and how to get the next shipment of contraband into Rapture and how to make sure -

He shut his eyes against it all, letting his mind drift back to earlier that day. Back to his conversation with Zeke.

He let his mind work its way back to Tanith.

And not just to her in general. He threw all of his other thoughts out and focused on specifics. Her cool, gray eyes, the way her hair felt between his fingertips, the taste his tongue had picked up when she kissed him on the corner of his mouth that day so long ago. He imagined what it would be like to pull her close to him and drag his lips up her neck, reveling, all the while, in the feel of her bare skin under his hands -

Jase's face flushed slightly and he let his eyes open. They drifted to the picture on the wall to his left again. He felt how warm his skin had become and felt slightly embarrassed at the turn his thoughts had taken - not to mention that the picture of his siblings and friends seemed to stare at him. Shuffling onto his right side, facing the blank wall that the cot was pushed against, Jase shut his eyes once more, the brief memory of Tanith kissing the corner of his lips flashing through his mind again.

He was asleep within moments.


End file.
